Ruhi Su

Ruhi Su — Biography

Mehmet Ruhi Su lost his family during World War I, was brought from Van to Adana, given up to a poor family, and then raised at Adana's Dârüleytâm orphanage for Armenian orphans; his birth year is recorded as 1912, though no exact date survives. He graduated from Kuleli Military High School in 1931, first worked as a violinist for the Presidential Philharmonic Orchestra, then turned to voice training and became one of the first four students admitted to the Ankara State Conservatory's Opera Department, graduating in 1942 to join the State Opera, where he sang as a bass-baritone for a decade in works such as Madame Butterfly, Tosca and Rigoletto. Arrested in the 1951 Turkish Communist Party crackdown, he served five years in prison from 1952, which ended his opera career; while imprisoned in 1957 he wrote the song Mahsus Mahal for Sıdıka, whom he later married. After his release he travelled Anatolia collecting folk songs and lost a radio job over a song deemed "class-division propaganda"; he founded the Dostlar Korosu choir in 1975. He did not receive a passport until 1977, after which he toured Europe and Australia, but a later request for a passport to seek treatment for prostate cancer was denied until six German writers, including Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, petitioned Turkey's Ministry of Culture on his behalf; permission came too late, and he died in Istanbul on 20 September 1985. His funeral became the first mass demonstration after the 1980 coup, and 160 mourners were detained.